Rise of the Machines: why we keep coming back to H.G. Wells’ visions of a dystopian future

When we thrill to the Terminator and Aliens movies, remember Wells!

On the evening of October 30, 1938, radio listeners in the greater New York area settled in for a broadcast of "Ramon Raquello" and his orchestra. Suddenly the performance was interrupted by the host, who explained that he had a special bulletin from "Intercontinental Radio News." Perhaps a few listeners scratched their heads and wondered what Intercontinental Radio News was, but apparently not many. Mysterious explosions of "incandescent gas" had been observed on Mars through various telescopes, IRN reported.

Next a bulletin came in of strange aerial vehicles in various parts of the country and weird, creepy creatures popping out of them. Soon reports started coming in from everywhere of a Martian invasion of the planet. A huge panic set in. Newspapers received thousands of phone calls.

"I was really hysterical," a woman who heard the broadcast as a teenager later remembered. "My two girl friends and I were crying and holding each other and everything seemed so unimportant in the face of death. We felt it was terrible we should die so young."

Finally the man who had produced this radio drama came on. It was Halloween eve, and he had concocted the piece out of a novel written by a man born 145 years ago: H.G. Wells.

"This is Orson Welles, ladies and gentlemen," the actor and director soothingly announced, "out of character, to assure you that the War of the Worlds has no further significance than as the holiday offering it was intended to be, the Mercury Theater's own radio version of dressing up in a sheet and jumping out of a bush and shouting boo. You will be relieved to hear that we didn't mean it."

In retrospect, what is disturbing about the Great War of the Worlds Radio Panic of 1938 is that despite this disclosure—also made at the opening of the performance and during an intermission—some listeners continued to cower in their basements for days. They were obviously responding to the power of Welles' radio adaptation.

But Welles had help. He was working with a masterpiece written by a man who, three decades before Hiroshima, foresaw atomic energy and nuclear war. H.G. Wells wanted to terrify us about what he saw as the coming crisis—ever more powerful technology in the hands of the human race. "If the dangers, confusions and disasters that crowd upon man in these days are enormous beyond any experience of the past, it is because science has brought him such powers as he never had before," Wells wrote in his Short History of the World, published in 1922.

H.G. Wells, circa 1890

This observation has become akin to a cliché in our time. But it was Wells who gave it to us and dramatically drove it home in the trio of novels that he wrote in an amazing four years: War of the Worlds, The Time Machine, and The Island of Doctor Moreau. While we love these books and their movie adaptations, what we have forgotten is that Wells composed them as a warning; one that, like an intellectual replicant, now endlessly reproduces itself in new cinematic forms.

When we thrill to the "Rise of the Machine" plots in the Terminator and Aliens series, we are reading H.G. Wells.

And we men

Herbert George Wells was born on September 21, 1866—the youngest son of an unsuccessful shopkeeper who lived and worked in a London suburb. At the age of 13, his family apprenticed Herbert to a chemist, then to a retailer of cloth. He eventually escaped both occupations by winning a scholarship to the University of London.

Following graduation, Wells taught biology for a spell. Then he took up journalism, "partly because it is a more remunerative profession in England than teaching," as he put it. But before then he studied with a philosopher who would have a huge influence on him. T.E. Huxley's famous lecture, Evolution and Ethics, responded to the prevalent doctrine of the time—Social Darwinism, with its assumption that human society is fated to follow the "survival-of-the-fittest" ethos found in the natural order.

Huxley contended that human civilization depended on repudiating this condition, not replicating it. "Let us understand, once for all, that the ethical progress of society depends, not on imitating the cosmic process, still less in running away from it, but in combating it," he wrote. "The history of civilization details the steps by which men have succeeded in building up an artificial world within the cosmos."

Wells' novels focus on how science and technology frighteningly play out in the absence of this "ethical progress." He made that clear in the introduction to War of the Worlds—his famous 1898 account of a Martian invasion of earth, endlessly spun off in movies like Independence Day and Battle Los Angeles. Neither the 1938 Mercury Theater nor Steven Spielberg's 2005 version with Tom Cruise includes Wells' explanation for why the Martians attacked earth: that their own planet was cooling beyond habitation.

"Looking across space with instruments," they saw "a morning star of hope," Wells explained, "our own warmer planet, green with vegetation and grey with water, with a cloudy atmosphere eloquent of fertility, with glimpses through its drifting cloud wisps of broad stretches of populous country and narrow, navy-crowded seas."

And we men, the creatures who inhabit this earth, must be to them at least as alien and lowly as are the monkeys and lemurs to us. The intellectual side of man already admits that life is an incessant struggle for existence, and it would seem that this too is the belief of the minds upon Mars. Their world is far gone in its cooling and this world is still crowded with life, but crowded only with what they regard as inferior animals. To carry warfare sunward is, indeed, their only escape from the destruction that, generation after generation, creeps upon them.

And before we judge of them too harshly we must remember what ruthless and utter destruction our own species has wrought, not only upon animals, such as the vanished bison and the dodo, but upon its inferior races. The Tasmanians, in spite of their human likeness, were entirely swept out of existence in a war of extermination waged by European immigrants, in the space of fifty years. Are we such apostles of mercy as to complain if the Martians warred in the same spirit?

We survive this assault via biological dumb luck. The Martians turn out to be allergic to earth bacteria, and drop dead. But references to evolution and devolution are all over War of the Worlds, as in the principal characters' conversation with an "artilleryman" (loosely portrayed by Tim Robbins in the Spielberg film), who gives the protagonist shelter in a house. In the novel, the soldier has all kinds of plans for what do next—first off creating a new society in London's sewer system.

"We have to invent a sort of life where men can live and breed, and be sufficiently secure to bring the children up," he explains. "Yes—wait a bit, and I'll make it clearer what I think ought to be done. The tame ones will go like all tame beasts... The risk is that we who keep wild will go savage—degenerate into a sort of big, savage rat."

A tripod attacks in War of the Worlds (2005)

Paramount Pictures

The Spielberg version of Wells' most famous novel doesn't get very far into these scary philosophical weeds. But like so many cinematic adaptations of his writings, it conveys the feeling that the author wanted us to come away with. As we watch Tom Cruise desperately trying to outrun a huge Martian tripod human scooper, our worst suspicions are confirmed. We are living on technological borrowed time. Sooner or later, someone with better machines but no better values than ours is going to chew us up and spit us out.

That's pretty close to the message of Terminator Salvation. In the fourth movie episode of the Terminator series, Skynet's hideous "Harvesters" are, like the tripods, grabbing humans en masse and delivering them to a dark fate at the self-conscious machine networks' headquarters in San Francisco.

But didn't humanity have itself to blame for that scenario? Didn't we create Skynet? H.G. Wells foresaw that special kind of hell too.

76 Reader Comments

I'm probably one of the few people here who liked Alien Resurrection, mainly for its tale about humanity and what we (as humans) will do to gain a percentage over our fellow man. And it was written by Joss Whedon to boot (I like his insights into people)

Wells is (well, was, he's dead now) a genius. I just wish someone would do a proper War of the Worlds film. While the 50s one was pretty good in its own right, it is very 50s in efx and storytelling.

I actually liked the WotW movie with Tom Cruise *ducks* No really, I liked how the entire movie was from his perspective -- most everything you saw was what he saw, there was hardly any scenes where he was not part of it. Most other movies have multiple threads woven through them, this was just his journey with his family -- just an interesting way to shoot a movie IMHO.

I remember doing a presentation in high school about the 1938 radio mass panic regarding mass hysteria and group psychology. Interesting stuff. I read War of the Worlds a few years ago - have to admit I found it a bit of a slog, looking back I think because of the slight difference in Wells' language and his society compared to ours - for example field guns in a large park taking potshots at the aliens.Interesting write up.

I didn't know it until now, he was born 100 years to the day before me. I wonder if he was advocating moving away from technological advances, or simply warning us to be very careful with our discoveries. Excellent article, very thought provoking. Thanks!

Well, this story is entirely based on a hoax, according to recent historical researches. It seems that the success of Welles' hoax is itself nothing but a hoax. I don't know if there's something out there in english, but in french you can read : La guerre des mondes a-t-elle eu lieu by P. Lagrange (2005) --> http://www.amazon.fr/guerre-mondes--t-e ... 263&sr=8-6

This is a really long article, but I'm sure the answer to the question posed:

Why do we keep coming back to visions of...a dystopian future in fiction?

I'm sure the reason has a lot to do with why disaster movies are appealing in general rather than something specific to science fiction. Many science fiction movies are also disaster movies (such as War of the Worlds). The science fiction aspects appeals to a need for fantasy; the disaster aspect appeals to a need for tension and action. I don't have any data though.

Your "War Of The Worlds" experience isn't complete without listening to original 1978 Jeff Wayne's "War Of The Worlds" musical score, the one with Richard Burton. I never saw the musical but the music and voice acting is pretty awesome.

For those who enjoy this type of fiction, look at E.M. Forster's great short story "The Machine Stops," a modern and well-written piece of dystopian fiction written in 1909 (surprisingly by the author of 'Howards End' and 'A Room With a View').

Well, this story is entirely based on a hoax, according to recent historical researches. It seems that the success of Welles' hoax is itself nothing but a hoax. I don't know if there's something out there in english, but in french you can read : La guerre des mondes a-t-elle eu lieu by P. Lagrange (2005) --> http://www.amazon.fr/guerre-mondes--t-e ... 263&sr=8-6

I suppose I’m somewhat of a Wells fan since I’ve read all of the books and a few others mentioned in this article, some more than once. The Huxley essay seems like a gem as well, I’ll read it thoroughly when I get a chance.

Good food for thought, and much of Orwell’s commentary goes beyond the themes mentioned in this article, I feel compelled to revisit some of his writing again.

Well, this story is entirely based on a hoax, according to recent historical researches. It seems that the success of Welles' hoax is itself nothing but a hoax. I don't know if there's something out there in english, but in french you can read : La guerre des mondes a-t-elle eu lieu by P. Lagrange (2005) --> http://www.amazon.fr/guerre-mondes--t-e ... 263&sr=8-6

The reason Wells and his successors are important is to point out why science ultimately must serve and answer to the rest of society.

The obvious example is the atomic bomb. The researchers in the US weapons program delivered a device that would have allowed America to destroy any opposing government on the planet. Although there were probably a lot of other factors that entered into the decision, the US and its allies decided on a long-term strategy of containment to defeat the communist dictatorships of the Soviet allies instead of atomic war. There is nothing in the field of physics that led to that decision, among other things it was a moral choice to not kill millions more civilians by the political and military leaders of the free world.

What we do take from Wells is the nagging suspicion that we are not in control, that the technologies we so gleefully develop will continuously backfire on us in ever more horrific ways, and that our love of individual freedom is a collective extermination pact.

I would argue that while a pursuance of individual freedom will lead to disasters, so would a pursuance of collectivism. The difference is that individual freedom will allow us to bounce back from those disasters faster because it unlocks the full potential of human compassion which has always been alive and well in most humans. Sometimes it takes a disaster for some to find their inner compassion, but once it is used there is really no limit to how much good one person can spread to others.

Re: film renditions of the Morlock/Eloi divide, Fritz Lang's _Metropolis_ is one of the earliest and still one of the best. Now that there's a restored version which recovers almost the entirety of the original, it's well worth hunting down a copy.

You forgot the Invisible Man. However I would argue that these were all social commentaries more than anti-technological treatises. War of the Worlds was about a higher technological civilization destroying a lower technology civilization, then succumbing to local diseases. The basis of that was found numerous times in the history of the British Empire. Time Machine was obviously about class warfare (similar to The Jungle, well known for exposing horrible meat-packing industry practices but really about socialism conquering class divides). The other two were of lesser over-arching societal flaws but certainly had their basis in them.

The difference is that individual freedom will allow us to bounce back from those disasters faster because it unlocks the full potential of human compassion which has always been alive and well in most humans

The difference is that individual freedom will allow us to bounce back from those disasters faster because it unlocks the full potential of human compassion which has always been alive and well in most humans.

Good article, but you probably need to rewatch the first Alien again. [internetgeek] Only one crewmember is implanted , and the creature that emerges, grows and then goes on a killing spree ,doesn't actually impregnate anyone. It's just a very good slasher movie in space.[/internetgeek]

Re: film renditions of the Morlock/Eloi divide, Fritz Lang's _Metropolis_ is one of the earliest and still one of the best. Now that there's a restored version which recovers almost the entirety of the original, it's well worth hunting down a copy.

The difference is that individual freedom will allow us to bounce back from those disasters faster because it unlocks the full potential of human compassion which has always been alive and well in most humans

While it is true that today mostly – only? – Wells' dystopian novels are widely read, Wells himself was not at all skeptical about scientific progress. Quite the contrary he was completely convinced – and devoted many books to it – that history will ultimately lead to a technocratic and socialist world state. It's quite interesting to see that most of his novels read today are early works. Most of the utopian and political books he wrote later (A Modern Utopia, The Shape of Things to Come, The Fate of Man etc.) are almost completely unknown (since they're much less fun to read and mostly outdated).

As the article correctly states, Huxley's teaching of the theory of evolution had a profound influence on Wells. But in some ways he got the concept of evolution completely wrong, because he believed that mankind must evolve towards a rationalist society (so he adapted evolution to society and considered it goal-oriented). Wells was convinced that science and proper scientific education would not only lead to a world without war and poverty, but basically to a world without politics. If only all people had a rational, scientifically trained mind, there wouldn't be any conflict of opinion. There would only be one correct – scientific – solution to every problem. In this sense, Wells was not only a fierce positivist and technocrat, but also a non-democrat.

Excellent commentary. I think another reason that HG Well's stories make the adaptations but not the underlying philosophy is simply one of attention span... or lack thereof. When you read literature from that era it is, by our modern taste, extremely verbose with plenty of side ramblings and diversions. It can be tough going unless one is a committed reader. The adventure story within, though, still speaks loud and clear.

A Princess of Mars is a slick, fast read by comparison, but I bet the movie version will still truncate large portions.

Well, this story is entirely based on a hoax, according to recent historical researches. It seems that the success of Welles' hoax is itself nothing but a hoax. I don't know if there's something out there in english, but in french you can read : La guerre des mondes a-t-elle eu lieu by P. Lagrange (2005) --> http://www.amazon.fr/guerre-mondes--t-e ... 263&sr=8-6

Here's a book claiming that Cantril findings on the panic was overstated and, surprise, a media hyped phenomenon. So it appears that the waters are muddied on this event.

Well, that's also Lagrange statement. he thinks Cantril's methodology is totally flawed. He explains the mystification leading to the legend of panic as follow :1) Newspapers (NY Times to begin with) title about a general panic across the US, but all media quote the same very few testimonies. I would add : what would be the need to describe with testimonies something eveyone has seen? If the real phenomenon was that huge, why isn't there any photography?2) The team Cantril leaded selected 135 people, with among them 100 chosen because they affirm to have been shocked by the show. They extrapol numbers and count 1,2 million terrified inhabitants. But, in the book (p3), the claim is only that thousands believed the story. Later (I couldn't find where due to Google Books limitations), Cantril confesses that a very little minority of the audience was concerned.3) The story was told and exagereted to justify the genius of Welles after the release of Citizen Kane (1940)4) Journalists and biographists quote each other without never going back to original material. According to Lagrange, an only testimony concerning a (failed) suicide can be found.5) The last and biggest episode of exageration (each building upon the previous) occurs after Welles' death.

Lagrange argues that this story reveals how journalists and intellectual see the general public : as a stupid vast majority with irrational behaviors.

Well, this story is entirely based on a hoax, according to recent historical researches. It seems that the success of Welles' hoax is itself nothing but a hoax. I don't know if there's something out there in english, but in french you can read : La guerre des mondes a-t-elle eu lieu by P. Lagrange (2005) --> http://www.amazon.fr/guerre-mondes--t-e ... 263&sr=8-6

Most of the utopian and political books he wrote later (A Modern Utopia, The Shape of Things to Come, The Fate of Man etc.) are almost completely unknown (since they're much less fun to read and mostly outdated).

I think the stigmatism we give "socialism" has played them down. That was also an era where everyone up to the President weighed in on novels and had a dramatic effect on sales, such as Teddy's quotes about those damn naturalists like Jack London. They got beat down from the beginning, so that all anyone remembers is Call of the Wild or "that other London book" rather than the later writings.

Well, this story is entirely based on a hoax, according to recent historical researches. It seems that the success of Welles' hoax is itself nothing but a hoax. I don't know if there's something out there in english, but in french you can read : La guerre des mondes a-t-elle eu lieu by P. Lagrange (2005) --> http://www.amazon.fr/guerre-mondes--t-e ... 263&sr=8-6

Actually, nobody was able to find any footprint of mass panic this day.

Pardon me, but if you don't know whether there is "something out there in English" that poo-poos whether or not some people who heard the radio show panicked, how could you possibly say this information was based on "recent historical researches" when the article was written by an apparently lone, obscure Frenchman? If indeed this was an "historical fact" then I'd imagine there'd be a copious amount of English-language data to draw upon--especially since the radio show was a distinctly English-language show broadcast exclusively in the US.

The fact of the matter is that US newspapers of the day were full of accounts of people testifying to being panicked by the show and the accounts of what people did during the panic. Apparently, then, P. Lagrange simply discounts all such reports as a "hoax" and then pretends they don't exist--much as he must've done for the National Geographic article I link above, also written circa, 2005.

Food of the Gods is pretty pro-science, pro-evolution in that the super children that are created, even though they are physically huge, are also morally superior. It really isn't anything like the movie adaptation where a group of people fight off other people in terrible rat costumes.Granted, it's been more than a decade since I read it, so I may have it wrong. Also, the story seems to end rather abruptly.

Most of the utopian and political books he wrote later (A Modern Utopia, The Shape of Things to Come, The Fate of Man etc.) are almost completely unknown (since they're much less fun to read and mostly outdated).

I think the stigmatism we give "socialism" has played them down. That was also an era where everyone up to the President weighed in on novels and had a dramatic effect on sales, such as Teddy's quotes about those damn naturalists like Jack London. They got beat down from the beginning, so that all anyone remembers is Call of the Wild or "that other London book" rather than the later writings.

Or frankly that the Shape of things to come was even more depressing. Really it ends with two sides each sure that they know what is right with no give and take or middle ground sought. A group using their superior technology to impose their will and vision on the rest of the world.Yea look how much fun that is.Give me some giant monsters that die from catching a cold any day.

Most of the utopian and political books he wrote later (A Modern Utopia, The Shape of Things to Come, The Fate of Man etc.) are almost completely unknown (since they're much less fun to read and mostly outdated).

I think the stigmatism we give "socialism" has played them down. That was also an era where everyone up to the President weighed in on novels and had a dramatic effect on sales, such as Teddy's quotes about those damn naturalists like Jack London. They got beat down from the beginning, so that all anyone remembers is Call of the Wild or "that other London book" rather than the later writings.

Or frankly that the Shape of things to come was even more depressing. Really it ends with two sides each sure that they know what is right with no give and take or middle ground sought. A group using their superior technology to impose their will and vision on the rest of the world.Yea look how much fun that is.Give me some giant monsters that die from catching a cold any day.

I guess you mean the movie Things to Come and not the novel The Shape of Things to Come; the two are quite different in content thought not in ideology. I agree with you. The interesting thing is that this movie which was meant to promote Wells' worldview isn't convincing at all. The world Wells advocates as it is shown in the movie is really not that intriguing and most viewers have a lot of sympathies for the rebels which are supposed to be "the bad guys".

I don't know why Wells' The War in the Air doesn't get more notice. It's another apocalyptic novel, huge flying machines carpet bombing Europe, land leviathans clanking across the landscape destroying everything in their path, pestilence, famine...Ah, good times.

Pardon me, but if you don't know whether there is "something out there in English" that poo-poos whether or not some people who heard the radio show panicked, how could you possibly say this information was based on "recent historical researches" when the article was written by an apparently lone, obscure Frenchman? If indeed this was an "historical fact" then I'd imagine there'd be a copious amount of English-language data to draw upon--especially since the radio show was a distinctly English-language show broadcast exclusively in the US.

The fact of the matter is that US newspapers of the day were full of accounts of people testifying to being panicked by the show and the accounts of what people did during the panic. Apparently, then, P. Lagrange simply discounts all such reports as a "hoax" and then pretends they don't exist--much as he must've done for the National Geographic article I link above, also written circa, 2005.

Please, spare me historical revisionists seeking publicity!

Well, did you just read the article you are linking to? It says thousands of people were panicked, which is a ridiculously low number compared at what some authors affirmed afterward (above a million). Again, P. Lagrange doesn't say nothing happend, he says there was a huge exageration about the reaction of the audience. And Lagrange is not that obscure : he works at CNRS, which is the biggest french research center (for all kinds of sciences). You know, it's the same center (well in a totally different team) that think to have found faster than light particles. There are lots of good scientists out of the US, and a good portion (the majority?) of scientists working in the US are aliens.

Arguments over the level of panic aside, I highly recommend getting a recording of the Welles broadcast and listening to it by the light of a lantern or a few candles. It's awesome, and more than a little scary even when you know it's fake.

Matthew Lasar / Matt writes for Ars Technica about media/technology history, intellectual property, the FCC, or the Internet in general. He teaches United States history and politics at the University of California at Santa Cruz.